Soulstice Freshness

Transcontinental apologies are in order for Fabrizio, organizer of a cross-blogdiscipline celebration of summer’s bounty. If you haven’t already (most likely you haven’t as many of you need my gentle hand to guide you around the blogosphere) you should check out the other participants and their aesthetic and sonic homages to this most righteous of seasons. Matt Andres put out an original piece, thirsty has a befitting mix up, and dust and groove is probably running his hands over his shelves upon shelves of records.

My delay in posting was due in large part by being intimidated by wanting to put out an original recipe while honoring the themes of soulacious, summertastic, monounsaturated fats and fresh. I think I hit the mark.

-initiate literary food digression that only tangentially relates back to recipe-

One of my more recent and refreshing summer finds has been avocado smoothies at Flamepoeira in Boston’s North End. To say that this place is funky is an understatement on the level of describing Guy Fieri’s hair as misguided. However out of place this LGBTQ friendly cafe in the heart of old old old Italian people, this guy knows how to blend a smoothie. It was my first introduction to the sweet possibilities of avocado. Blended with a little vanilla ice cream this creates a rich, smooth flavor that made me suck down two of these a day for a week.

Avocados are cheap and plentiful right now, so I thought I might try to incorporate these little guys into my morning routine and perhaps recreate the magic of Langelo’s smoothie in breakfast form. I settled on the following, perhaps my most out of the box breakfast yet, but satisfying as all get out. I have no friggin’ idea what would taste good with this, so I won’t guess. Actually, I will… PBR.

Freaked out by the thought of greenish hued freedom toast? I was too; but its not all that ugly. Ch-ch-ch-check it out.

It’s not like Green Eggs and Ham green, at this point its still just kind of flecked with little bits o’ green.

First item is dealing with the avocado. To dice it just run a butter knife in parallel lines down the fruit and then across. The smaller it is the easier it will be to mash up. Scoop out with a spoon and mash on the bottom of a wide mixing bowl. Mash mash mash. Keep mashing. Now dollop your yogurt in there and whisk it up with the yogurt. There’s that greenness you were worried about. Its okay, its about to get subdued. Toss the salt, vanilla and eggs and whisk thoroughly for maybe a half minute before adding the milk slowly. See? A lovely, lightly green soaking liquid for the bread.

Really, freedom toast (Thanks Congressional Republicans!) is all about the soaking. You can’t just dip a piece of toast into some goop and throw it in a hot pan. The key here is to let it sit for as long as two minutes. Because it needs to sit you need some good strong bread, something that’ll hold up to moisture. Recently I became a regular at New Roma bread here in Sacramento and their milk bread is perfect for this job. Other good ones include challah, any dense wheat or pain levain, though in this case sourdough is probably a bit much.

As its sitting, get your fat hot. Orangette’s post on using canola oil for the frying convinced me to give it a try here and I was not disappointed. The key is fairly low heat. Burnt toast sucks and should be avoided. By frying it for a bit longer on lower heat the inside will become softer while the outside gets super crispy and nice and golden. As I look at it now, it kinda resembles that cheese toast that I got as a kid at Sizzler. This is why I’m a good cook.

So fry it for a bit, then switch it on ’em. Flipmode. Flipmode’s the greatest.